Tag: beta

I’m a big fan of Mozilla Firefox, but I finally have made the decision to use Google Chrome as my default browser. I did it for just one reason. Speed. Everything just seems faster in Chrome. It’s just not my perception either. Benchmarks after benchmarks have indicated that Chrome is the just fastest browser in the planet.

So, when Mozilla came out today with Firefox 4 Beta 7, I was a bit hopeful, but my hope was quickly dashed when it reported that Firefox 4 is still slower than Chrome. Don’t get me wrong, Firefox 4 is still considerably faster than it’s current offering, but just not fast enough compared to the current Chome release.

To help me with my decision, I was able to download my favorite plugin called Web Developer Tools to work in Google Chrome. I love this plugin. If you’re a web developer, it’s a must have. Unless something dramatic changes in the browser world, I’ll be on Google Chrome for a while.

Microsoft just released IE 9 Beta 1 which promises to be faster and standards compliant. We will see. But IE 9 has lots of competition from Chrome and Firefox these days. In order for IE 9 to stand out above its competition, it really needs to address security issues that has plague previous IE versions, as well as sticking with the tried and true industry standards.

In addition, IE 9 needs to keep up with speed improvements gained by Chrome and Firefox. For non-technical Windows users, IE 9 will most likely become their default browsers. However, most techies will most likely gravitate to a browser that gives them security, functionality and speed. That means usually either Firefox or Chrome.

Well, it’s official. Google Chrome browser is now available for the Mac and Linux. Information Week has the details:

“We’ve been working hard to deliver a first-class browser for the Mac — it took longer than we expected, but we hope the wait was worth it!” declared Google product manager Brian Rakowski in a blog post. “We wanted Google Chrome to feel at home on the Mac, so we’ve focused on uniting our clean, simple design with subtle animations and effects to create a snappy and satisfying browsing experience on OS X.”Google also released a beta version of Chrome for Linux and browser extensions for users of beta and developer builds.

Google’s design goals for Chrome, which represents the foundation of the company’s forthcoming Chrome OS, remain focused on speed, stability, and security. As an example, Chrome isolates each browser tab so that buggy Web page code will only crash the tab and not the entire browser. Chrome’s multiprocess architecture is also a way to protect users from poorly coded or malicious extensions.

When an Ubuntu Beta version is released, you know that the final release is just around the corner. Ubuntu 9.10 or Karmic Koala is scheduled for a late October release. What’s new? Karmic has new themes, icons and wallpapers. The Ubuntu Software Store has been renamed to the Ubuntu Software Center. To facilitate faster boot time, Ubuntu now uses Upstart, a an event-based replacement for the /sbin/init daemon which handles starting of tasks and services during boot and stopping them during shutdown. There are other features and improvements found here. Of course, there are other Ubuntu 9.10 versions available for download. You can check out the rest of the Ubuntu family below courtesy of Softpedia.